French Soak: This sage-colored, antique bathing tub from France (circa 1900) is available for $905 at Cafe Society's Napa cafe and shop. Photo by Peter Duyan

French Soak: This sage-colored, antique bathing tub from France (circa 1900) is available for $905 at Cafe Society's Napa cafe and shop. Photo by Peter Duyan

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Beaucoup boutiques / Design shops for Francophiles have sprung up all over the Bay Area

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Don't look now but the French are invading San Francisco.

To be sure, our city has long lived up to its nickname "the Paris of the West," particularly when it comes to food and wine, and, oh yes -- design. No need to wing off to Charles de Gaulle. You can quench your thirst with a Francophile sojourn right here.

Be it traditional Louis XIV, funky cafe ware or Art Deco, if it's a la mode and French, chances are you'll spot it in a quaint antique shop in Russian Hill, Presidio Heights, Hayes Valley or historic Jackson Square. But these days it seems France is sending reinforcements. At least half a dozen new design shops and showrooms throughout the Bay Area recently opened for business to feed the growing frenzy of all things French.

Francophiles, interior designers and antique dealers Joan and Steve Osburn have long helped California homeowners, restaurateurs and hoteliers create the look and feel of an authentic Parisian cafe via their interior design firm, Osburn Design, and their Cafe Society showroom in the San Francisco Design Center. Last year the couple expanded their business to include a sister cafe and store in Napa (see today's Hot Stuff column.)

"The French are about style. If they're nothing else, they are about style, " says Joan Osburn, peering through her decidedly late 1800s-style temple spectacles. "Let's face it: America is not about style. But those Americans who are are attracted to France."

It's safe to say that many of the first San Franciscans were more familiar with a menu of bouillabaisse and vol-au-vent than baked beans and apple pie. J. J. Vioget, the first recorded French immigrant to San Francisco, arrived here in 1839 and laid out the basic diagram for the city. By 1850 the French were manning stores, restaurants and hotels along Clay Street in what became known as the French Quarter.

Osburn ascribes San Franciscans' enduring fervor for French exports to a "certain level of sophistication" and a devotion to wine and the culinary arts.

Most important: a penchant for a bold aesthetic.

"We do revere our beauty, don't we?" she says about San Franciscans. "Americans who travel to France and get it are poets, designers and writers. They are people who go to the opera, who read and appreciate good literature, good food and good wine."

French expatriates Laurent Philippe and Georges Blum opened their 5,000- square-foot Potrero Hill showroom in 1998 and packed it to the rafters with antique bistro and kitchen furniture. Nearly five years and a de-boom later, The Butler & The Chef is enjoying a renaissance of sorts.

"This style has been very hot in Europe for many years. Now it's starting to be a big trend in the States. People are recycling old pieces and not viewing them as antiques but rather pieces that they can live with, incorporate and use in their lives," Blum told The Chronicle last year.

The duo frequently trek to their native country to hunt for rare items from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, including an ornate 1930s Art Deco pewter bar, marble pastry tables and a meat locker full of pristine antique butcher blocks.

"Our focus is not to sell people a collector's item to put in a display case," says Blum, who has lived in the United States for the past two decades. "These are pieces that have had their various (past) lives, and now they're being reused."

Art Deco collector Alain Lavaud was pleased to find out that many Americans who frequented his Lyon shops -- nearly half of his entire clientele -- were well versed in the mod style. So Lavaud put two and two together and last year opened L'Art Deco Francais on Market Street.

"Most, about 90 percent, of our customers have traveled throughout Europe to find their own items," Lavaud said of his loyal San Francisco patrons. "By the time they come to us -- they give us a very accurate description of what they want."

L'Art Deco Francais is pressed alongside other furniture and design retailers at Gough and Haight streets -- a timeworn street corner with the ambience of a bustling European boulevard. The petit shop recently became the sole California distributor of prestigious fabrics from Prelle, which has woven high-end textiles in France since the 18th century.

"French decorative arts can add such a sense of history to a space," says Carolyn Rebuffel, who along with her husband, Laurent Rebuffel (a Cannes native and second generation antiques dealer), owns and operates Rebuffel Antiques and Habite in SoMa. "When you bring in a French antique it's laden with the history of the country. It really brings out a presence in your home."

Nestled in San Francisco's historic Jackson Square, the 2-year-old Rebuffel Antiques has briskly become a rendezvous spot for those attracted to French culture -- its showroom a lush resource for interior designers and collectors of crystal chandeliers, period dining tables, statuary, 18th and 19th century armories and upholstered fauteuils and bergeres (easy chairs).

Cedric Lebert's dealings in French antiques likewise is a family tradition - - his a quarter century in the making. While his relatives still live in the 14th century manor in Gondrecourt-le-Chateau in Lorraine -- where their business, Lebert Antic, is based -- the 25-year-old moved across the Atlantic last spring to set up shop in SoMa's thriving design district.

The wife of Andre Mace (whose celebrated Rue Faubourg St. Honore store in Paris dates back to 1873) trained Lebert's father, Jean-Claude. With such prestigious roots, it's easy to see why the young Lebert is adamant about collecting and vending only authentic architectural artifacts from France's most elegant estates.

Lebert's limestone fireplaces start at $2,500 and jump to $22,000 for those from the Renaissance period. The company also deals in smaller, more affordable architectural accents such as stone and iron fountain statuary, stone baptisteries from chapel castles and tapestries.

No need to shell out thousands for an antique mantel, however, to join the ranks of the Francophiles.

"It's not about how big your house is in Tiburon or Danville, or how much money your antiques cost. It's about history and human contact," says Terrance Gelenter. "Those of us who love the City of Light are connected at a human level."

Gelenter, who often speaks at salons sponsored by Cafe Society, Rebuffel Antiques and others, is director and head tour guide of the San Francisco- based Paris Through Expatriate Eyes. Part tour company, part online salon and part cyber magazine, the organization is above all else a tight-knit community of Francophiles. Francophiles like Cara Black, a Noe Valley resident and writer who spends most summers in Paris and Provence, visiting friends, researching material for her mystery novels and ferreting out treasures in quaint brocantes (neighborhood flea markets).

"I bring back whatever I can drag on the plane," says Black, whose new book,

"Murder in the Bastille," due out in April from Soho Crime, is based in the famous prison-turned-furniture-making quarter of Paris. "There's only one place in Paris to buy bubble wrap, and I found it."

Cafe Society's Osburn, a UC Berkeley graduate who studied at San Francisco's renowned Rudolph Schaefer School of Design, fancies herself an ambassador of sorts. While on her frequent buying excursions to Italy, Prague, Provence and Paris, she often makes it known that she's from San Francisco. "That always brings a smile to people's faces."

You'd think the designer long ago would have packed her valise and moved to a Seine-side flat. Not so, she says.

"I don't want to live there. I absolutely love the Bay Area. But I do want to bring back the very best of France for others to use and enjoy."